PM plans to allow housing benefits to fund mortgages

Boris Johnson will reportedly allow people to use their housing benefits to buy homes, as part of a set of policy announcements aimed at easing the housing crisis and ensuring his own habitation of Downing Street continues.

- ANDY GREGORY

Seeking to regain the initiative after 41 per cent of Tory MPs voted to oust him, the prime minister is expected to use a speech in Lancashire today to announce plans to tear up rules stopping people from declaring the benefit as part of their income when applying for a mortgage and using it to make monthly payments.

With the cost of housing benefits having been expected to rise to £30bn last year, Mr Johnson will reportedly argue that this money would be better spent helping people onto the property ladder than on paying their rent – in a policy dubbed “benefits to bricks” by one minister, according to The Times.

While the minister reportedly claimed the plans would enable young people to pass mortgage lenders’ affordability checks, former pensions minister Steve Webb told the paper that “support would have to be substantial and sustained for lowincome households to be attractive to mortgage lenders”.

Labour frontbencher Jess Phillips was also among those questioning how the housing benefits policy will work because individuals with more than £16,000 in savings and investments do not qualify for universal credit. “It’s almost as if Boris Johnson doesn’t do much benefits casework,” she quipped.